Biografie von Nicholas S.J. POINT (1799-1868)

Birth place: Rocroy (near Belgium), France

Death place: Quebec, Canada

Profession: Amateur painter

Work: Jesuit Provincial House in St. Louis (MO) owns over 100 of his sketches; work also located in Jesuit Archives (Rome, Italy)

Comments: Jesuit priest who served in France, Switzerland, and Spain before being sent to St. Mary's, KY, in 1835. After serving in Louisiana and Westport, MO, he joined Father de Smet's missionary group in 1841, acting as a diarist on their journey to the Rockies (arriving at the Flathead area, in what is now Montana). Point spent the winter with the Indians, giving religious instruction and also making paintings and sketches of their daily lives. In 1842 he designed and built a short-lived mission among the Coeur d'Alene Indians (in region that is now part of Northern Idaho). In 1845 he worked to establish a mission among the Blackfeet but when this failed he requested a transfer to Canada, which he received in 1847. He soon retired to Windsor, Ontario, and in 1859 wrote Wilderness Kingdom which he illustrated with hundreds of his paintings depicting the lives of the Rocky Mountain Indians. Some of his sketches also formed the basis for lithographs illustrating Father de Smet's Oregon Missions and Travels over the Rocky Mountains in 1845-46.

Sources: G&W; Rasmussen, Art and Artists in Oregon, 1500-1900," cite also Cody, History of the Coeur d'Alene Mission of the Sacred Heart and Wagner, The Plains and the Rockies. More recently, see P&H Samuels, 375."